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Comment by drb91 | Hacker News Reader

I must say I take a huge amount of joy watching a corporation try to bend over backwards to monopolize a fungus that has been enjoyed by humans for millenia. Is it a surprise that a capitalist industry is more motivated by profits than by the production of useful goods and services? Of course not: but it is good comedy. Maybe laughing at the absurdity of for-profit healthcare will be what saves us all from crippling depression!

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The article says they are trying to restrict how research on the drug is done too and that's a catastrophe on its own. No laughing matter here. This might seem ridiculous on the surface, but it's a sinister move.

If you can’t laugh at the news, you’ll cry. Sanity is important.

I'm for it. Just like home brewing and distilling and vinting, growing your own weed or shrooms, you can still do it at home if you have the time, energy, expertise, and equipment. The corporations will hopefully make it easy and accessible to get good quality, safe stuff in a store front. Both options are good for freedom IMO.

That joy will fade when the general public is led to believe that this company is the only "safe" providers, due to a FUD campaign they will finance attacking competitors and lead uncertainty to the safety prospect of growing one's own shrooms. It does not matter what they say, they can make up anything. Their campaign will be executed through multiple parties and will not look like they are behind it.

I am not sure how successful they will be.. The big pharma guys can get into this game pretty easily. The issue will be establishing new FDA approvals. I don't think the chemical process / synthesis is patentable anymore. Even distillation will not be.

> Is it a surprise that a capitalist industry is more motivated by profits than by the production of useful goods and services?

I use the Sriracha company [0] as a model of capitalism done right. The guy (CEO and founder) just wants everyone to have good hot sauce. I often think about what different things (cell phone apps, cars, homes, etc) would look like if people actually cared about who they were selling to and what they were selling. (I mean specifically: "what if profit wasn't the central concern?".)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sriracha_sauce_(Huy_Fong_Foods...

I don't see how a company that uses the legal system to get their way is a free market capitalist company. Sounds like an oligarchy enabled by convoluted laws.

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